[SOLVED] How to show a different text in MFCStatusBar Progress bar

How to show a different text in MFCStatusBar Progress bar

I would like to have a progress bar in the MFC status bar, which shows the progress in the amount of elapsed counts (e.g., 15/235) instead of the progress in percentage, while still showing a colored progress bar.

It seems, however, that I can either show the amounts and not the colored progress, or vice versa. By doing EnablePaneProgressBar(1, 150, TRUE), only the percentage is shown:

How do I achieve this?

Solution

Searched the MFC sources to see how this works, and found its implementation. It's not in the CMFCStatusBar code actually, instead it's in file afxvisualmanager.cpp line 1897, function CMFCVisualManager::OnDrawStatusBarProgress(). Namely, this is an MFC feature (the MFC library draws the progress-bar), and it seems there is no some Win32 Progerss Bar control there - these do not display text anyway.

Don't know if this can be changed, but a possible implementation could be:

Define a new CMFCVisualManager-derived class, overriding the OnDrawStatusBarProgress() member - it's virtual fortunately.
In the override change the Format() call, to something like strText.Format(_T("%d/%d"), nProgressCurr, nProgressTotal);
Finally you have to replace the CMFCVisualManager instance with your overridden visual manager. It's not quite easy to do, as the visual manager is a single-instance object, created and maintained by the MFC framework, which is a bit tricky. The CMFCVisualManager::SetDefaultManager() method seems to do this properly though. See here and here.

A downside is that this will change the behavior of all progress-bars in your status-bar (not a problem if there is only one). It can still be changed though (ie draw each progress-bar differently, based on its pane number).

I can't tell if this is worth the effort, depends on your project requirements, schedule, budget etc.

EDIT:
Well, it seems it is quite easier actually. There is a call of CMFCVisualManager::SetDefaultManager() in CMainFrame::OnCreate(). It's in the wizard-generated code of your frame-window class (MainFrm.cpp). Change it to use your overridden visual manager class instead.